CLOSED: What is this red insect?

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deadmanswill Chennai, India Aug 31, 2008

Can somebody ID this red little critter please? I found this guy in South India 4 weeks back. I want to post him in my blog. Also please tell me if I can mention the identifier's name in the blog post.

cheers
deadmanswill

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deadmanswill Chennai, India Aug 31, 2008

here's the image for scale

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wallaby1 Lincoln, United Kingdom(Zone 8a) Aug 31, 2008

It looks like a nymph of a True Bug, Order Hemiptera, but a well developed one. The nymphs do vary a great deal up until maturity and they can be difficult to ID unless you happen to stumble across a pic of one at the same stage! I have found them to look nothing like the mature adult.

I seem to be coming across the Red Cotton Bug for India a lot, which is in the Family Pyrrhocoridae. It could be a Seed Bug in Family Lygaeidae, a search for that brings up the Red Cotton Bug too .

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=Lygaeidae%20india&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

The Fire Bug, Pyrrhocoris apterus looks to be a possibility too, not sure if it is in India as a search doesn't show it.

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/true_bugs_4.html

There is a pic of very young Red Cotton Bugs here:

http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5368187





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deadmanswill Chennai, India Sep 01, 2008

oh, I didn't know it was a nymph. seeing it sucking on the sap of leaves, I assumed it was an adult. That shows how less I know about insects. I just looked up Lygaeidae and yes this bug looks closer to the other insects of that family.

I will check out a little more and post this as 'likely belongs to Lygaeidae'. Thanks so much for the help. BTW can I post your name in the blog? Do please give me your full name and also any website link of yours so I can post that too.

I am posting names of photographers (I and my friend), identifiers names and even the names of insect scouts (guys who spotted the insects in first place).

Cheers
deadmanswill
http://grasslords.blogspot.com/

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wallaby1 Lincoln, United Kingdom(Zone 8a) Sep 01, 2008

You're welcome, I don't have a website but if you wish to use my name then my user name on here would suffice, and I don't think Dave would object to your placing a link to this site. Perhaps you could dmail Admin to check on that.

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deadmanswill Chennai, India Sep 01, 2008

Yeah, I will ask the Admin about it. Thanks for the help.

deadmanswill

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